The Bad Blogger Returns

Hi Blogees,

My conscious has finally got the better of me. Yes, I am still alive and (apart from one mild shaking fit brought on by a little bit of stress a couple of weeks ago) very well.

July and August have been filled with Holidays (just Carol & me) in Cornwall where, despite the rain, we had a hiking good time. Joss has been of his crutches for a while and is now fully back to school and work and he seems happy about it!

REHEAT
I forgot to mention that back in May our heating system started to leak and given its age it was unrepairable (of course) so we had to order a new one. Its seem pretty incredible paying nearly 30 kCHF for a giant storage radiator to feed our underfloor heating. Before going on holiday we had our new heating put in, but the pipes were still hanging waiting for the plumber (Swiss heating engineers are not plumbers so they can't connect the pipes). Hopefully we will get them connected before Winter, I'm expecting a cold one, don't no why, just am.

THE RETURN OF KRANKENTAGEGELD, INVALIDITÄTSVERSICHERUNG AND......
Back in August 2008 Three Different Kinds of Pain I talked about all these big words and how they would effect me if I didn't go back to work full time (which nobody expected). Well a year on (as predicted by everybody except the official body "the IV Stelle") I got my decision for a full IV pension.

Now you might think a full IV pension would mean you get the maximum allowed, but oh no, that is before you take into consideration the income from my 30% salary and that I didn't pay for the IV while I was working in England (strangely). So be careful ex-pat Swissli's just because there are reciprocal agreements between the UK and Switzerland does not mean they are "fully" reciprocal. What I mean is if you pay everything you should in the UK and then move to Switzerland and continue paying everything you should this will not give you full access to Swiss benefits only the equivalent benefits. This means, for instance, AHV (old age pension) is covered but IV (Invalidity) isn't unless you are not working at all. So make sure you pay up all the stuff you didn't pay when you were elsewhere (well at least IV) .

---------------------------- Enough of my whining
Got lots of new music to play and been playing lots of old stuff too. Play-list update coming soon.
Tons of workshops and meetings coming up in the next couple of weeks so the bad blogger may return.

Been away such a long time, got my next MRI in two weeks

End of a Tumour

The latest MRI CD arrived yesterday, so I've put together a composite of the side and top views at the same position from each scan set since August 2007 . The first two show the fast early growth during August 2007 and then the stabilization during the combined radio and chemo therapies in February 2008 and the then the almost complete obliteration by May 2008 resulting in almost identical pictures over the last year. All I have now is the leftover scarring (internal and external) which will stay with me until decomposition.

Prof. Nuero and Dr. Chemo were both well pleased at the stability over the last year (as was Carol and, not to mention, me). But they weren't pleased enough to let me work more than my current 30%.

So what happens now? We wait and watch, check it one more time on the 3 month check up cycle and then I''ll allow them to put me on to 6 month cycle if everything looks the same. Sometime of course it is likely to be back but where and how is anybody's guess.

Until then its time to forget about it and celebrate life as much as possible.

Week around the hospital

Started last weekend with a call from Joss at about 5pm on Friday. He asked if we might pick him up from Kantonspital Aarau (my regular home from home) as he had spent the afternoon there having his left kneecap put back in place after a particularly violent game of football at college had knocked it off (very painful I have been told in no uncertain terms) . Since then Joss has clattering around on Crutches and being driven (mostly by Carol) to all of his end of term appointments. He was given an appointment on Wednesday for an operation to have a look around inside the knee to check on the ligaments. The same day as my MRI results appointment.

I spent Monday & Tuesday at some meetings in Paris. Had a great meal at a "Pork" restaurant "Chez Cochon" on tuesday evening after a late meeting. Excellent food with some interesting Basque & French traditional pork meats.

On Wednesday morning, as I was flying back from Paris, Joss was under the Knife and under Anastasie . I arrived for my 2pm appoint just in time to see him post op before going to see my Neurologist & my Oncologist.

His operation was a success in that everything was opened and closed leaving only three scars and only one of those worth showing off. From the point of operative procedures nothing significant was required. Now all that is left is lots of Physio and 7 weeks off work hobbling around on crutches. Poor guy.

Oh, by the way, my tumour is stable and tiny, no change at all, nada. That is great news. I'll put some pictures together once I have the MRI CD.

A Very Bad Blogger

Over 2 Months without an entry.
I have no excuses it is not that nothing has been happening, quite the opposite, but nothing to do with my tumour.

I am going to cheat and fill in some things by backdating some new entries concerning events in the past 2 months.

My health is fine (no seizures for 15 weeks!) and I have been doing a lot more exercise recently. Still get a little more tired than I used to but that could be old age creeping on. Had the latest MRI last week but won't get the results until next Wednesday. Look out for the backdated and hopefully some new posts.

Event ends with a crunch

Forgot to post this when it was written.

Spent last weekend at the AGM of the Institute of Engineering & Technology (Switzerland). The meeting and the accompanying lectures were held in Bussigny a small village just outside of Lausanne. Carol and I drove down Saturday morning and stayed over until Sunday afternoon.

Apart from the usual activities of an AGM there was some interesting stuff too :-) including three lectures, two around mobile network activities The first was "Next generation mobile networks" from Dr. P Meisner, Operating Officer of NGMN Alliance and the Second was about a Professional network of Wireless Pro's "Wireless Monday" who are doing some innovative work in their "spare" time from Dr. C Florian. The final lecture was from Prof. Gardiol about the experiments carried out by Marconi in Salvan (CH) and the controversy between Italy and Switzerland over where these early important experiments were carried out.

Hm, perhaps that is the real strategy behind Italy's redrawing of their borders due to the glacier changes. Salvan is only 20km to the Italian border :-)

Had a nice meal in the evening complete with a musical inderlude from a couple of our members. Next morning we took a wander round the lakeside in Lausanne taking in the unexpected weather. Got back late Sunday afternoon and finished the weekend with a bang.

As we came into the turning place for our drive Joss called us on my mobile to ask when we were coming back, I told him, of course, soon and hung up the phone. For some reason I assumed I had already put the car in reverse to make the final maneuver into our drive and discovered I hadn't as we moved forward and into our wall..... One of those especially embarrassing and, no doubt, expensive maneuvers.

Qur'an

Commenting on a text which is used as the basis of the faith of millions of people is always difficult.

Over the past year or so I have (re-) read the Bible, old and new testament, and a number of books recommended to me that attempted to help me to find faith in Christianity. These books were of varying quality of literary achievement but none of them even started to convince me that I should have any kind of religious faith. I think the concept of revealed religion is too difficult for me to get my head around. Why don't we all get revelations? If our god wanted us to hear him why not speak to us all?

Anyway, not having had enough of this by now I have been tackling the Qur'an. I am about a third of the way through and whereas with the Bible I was able to, at least, understand what the authors was trying to achieve even in the context of their own world and how that would apply to us. There is no such consistency in the Qur'an.

What I can feel from the Qur'an is the prattling of a man who preached peace and understanding among all faiths (meccan suras) until he had the power to preach war and the dominance of Islam (medinan suras).

As for it being the Greatest literary masterpiece in Arabic, even allowing for issues in translation (by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem) I find that difficult to believe. The thing isn't even written in chronological order,

I have four words for the Qur'an

Complex

Contextual

Contradictory

Repetitive

This is not a script for life in our times. The voice of god needs to do an update for all mankind, but if he did that in a revealed fashion nobody would believe the messenger and we would have him killed metaphorically or otherwise as we always have.

If anybody can explain all this to me or point me at somewhere I can learn it then feel welcome.
I think I'm off to study Philosophy.

Not so Dumbbells

The Gym

We have a pretty OK home gym, as you may have seen in a number of recent "accident reports". In addiction, I mean addition (Freudian or what) to the dangerous cuplprits of the rower and bench, we have a treadmill, a recumbent exercise bike, a smalll (fixed weight) multi-gym along with a set of adjustable dumbbells, and very little space in our cellar.

Free Weight Limitation

A couple of months ago I started to run out of available weight on my old dumbbells set for some exercises (things like rows, chest ext., tricep ext. squats etc). I.e. I am getting stronger.

I used to have a personal trainer, so that would'nt have been a problem in the past, because he had all the gear on earth. Unfortunately I don't have him any longer for various reasons, most of them being money (sorry Mark).

To get more weight in the free weights area required either getting a higher weight adjuststable set (2-20kg) rather than my current 1-10kg set or going over to a Bar Bell (long bar) and (more) weights. Ideally I would like to have gone for the Bar Bell but unfortunately that space limitation would have been a problem without dumping something else (no option). So the only option was the bigger Dumbbells.

The non-physical pain of using dumbbells

Now if you have ever used adjustable dumbbells you will know what a pain it is to adjust the weight on the bar. You have to either unscrew or unclip a retainer on each side of each dumbbell (for 2 hand exercises) change the old weights for the new ones (which are almost certainly attatched to another dumbbell). When you go to the larger weights it gets even worse moving them around. All this fiddling adds significant time to workouts.

Get Selectored

Nowadays it is possible to get some HI-Tech adjustable dumbbells whose weight are changed mechanically by moving a pin or by turning a dial. This makes it much easier and quicker to change the weights with the slight disadvantage that they a bit long.

Guess what Ian got for his birthday........More weight and faster workouts.

Thank's Carol, you are far too good to me.